Custer of the West is one of those misbegotten epics from the 60s, an independent production that
wanted to compete with the Ben-Hurs and Lawrence of Arabias of the film world. Conceived
as a roadshow production shot in 70mm, it served its purpose as programming filling for the giant
curved Cinerama screens, along with other Philip Yordan Security Pictures presentations like
Krakatoa: East of Java. Unfortunately, not only does the production show a penny-pinching
cheapness, but the script is barely up to the needs of the story.

Synopsis:

With no better offers to be had, famous Civil War upstart officer George Armstrong
Custer takes over the Western Cavalry maintaining the peace in the Dakotas. He soon learns that
the U.S. treaties are a sham, that Indian lands are being stolen and every excuse for driving them
off their hunting grounds is being encouraged. With his wife Elizabeth (Mary Ure) Custer goes
in and out of favor in Washington, while failing to keep wildcatting miners like his own
deserting Sergant Mulligan (Robert Ryan) from running off to prospect for gold in Indian
country. After trying to humble the prideful Indian warrior Dull Knife (Kieron Moore), Custer
leads his 7th Cavalry into the biggest military blunder in U.S. history.

In the early 60s, writer-turned-producer Philip Yordan was kind of running amuck in Spain. Flush with
script money from large Samuel Bronston epics, he built his Security Pictures through a series of
cheap and mostly abortive international productions like 1963's The Day of the Triffids. But
clever deal-making kept Yordan rolling, beginning with the King Brothers in the '40s and continuing
into the '50s fronting blacklisted writers. His 60s pictures like
The Battle of the Bulge were reasonable hits even if the critics thought they were terrible.

Custer of the West is a typical Yordan production - an impressively produced spectacle is let
down by overall cheapness. There are a couple of nice setpieces early on and an okay battle at the
end, although every scene is hampered by director Robert Siodmak's stiff use of the 70mm camera.
The majority of this "epic" is played out in small rooms and under-decorated
exteriors. Custer's frontier fort looks understaffed and sketchy and nothing in the film from the
costumes up has any layers of detail. Custer visits Washington, and all we see is an image of him
speaking, superimposed over a painting of the capitol dome.

What should be a big movie is filmed as if production money was threatening to dry up and the
production shuttered at any moment (a chronic ocurrence with Triffids). The slapdash script
alternates between half-hearted under-populated action scenes, talky exposition and a few impressive
spectacles like the simplified ending battle. The actual text of the script is fairly progressive;
movie fans thought the pro-Indian
Little Big Man was the beginning of
political awareness on this issue, but Custer of the West is almost strident in its cynicism
about Washington motives. Robert Shaw's tentative Custer (he neutralizes his British accent, but
still doesn't seem very American) at least is not presented as a guilty liberal Indian hunter. He
has no compunctions whatsoever about wiping out innocent women and children if so ordered by his
Army superiors. In his meeting with Dull Knife (what's the matter, would the Crazy Horse or Sitting
Bull estates sue if real names were used?) Custer is brutally honest, telling the Indian chief that
his people are defeated and his days numbered. Englishman Kieron Moore (a star in Yordan's
Triffids and Crack in the World) is fairly convincing as the Native American.

That doesn't make George Armstrong a very sympathetic character, and Custer of the West loses
our interest about halfway through. Mary Ure (Shaw's costar in the very good Irvin Kershner film
The Luck of Ginger Coffey) is sweet in the "Olivia de Havilland" role but has little to do
but guide her officer hubby Custer from the sidelines, making him sponsor a silly railroad gun to
get his command back. Libby Custer seems a big step backwards from Maria Schell's gutsy
frontier women in Daves' The Hanging Tree and Mann's Cimarron. Lawrence Tierney, the
star of Yordan's 1945 breakthrough hit Dillinger does well as Custer's friend General
Philip Sheridan. Jeffrey Hunter and Ty Hardin stumble in poorly written roles as Custer's famous
Captain Benteen and Major Reno, with one a drunkard and the other a vaguely conceived soft-on-redskins
type. But they're given great treatment when compared to Robert Ryan, a "guest star" with a terrible
runaway miner role that could have been shot in a day and adds nothing to the picture.

The most embarassing part of the movie are the "Cinerama" episodes confected to show off the
widescreen dynamics of the Ultra-Wide Super Technirama 70 format. Railroad cars are set rolling
by themselves, a wagon runs wild down a road without any brakes, and a lumberjack escapes down
an endless wooden water logging chute. Whenever these scenes hit, the story stops dead for minutes
at at time, to allow for repetitive POV shots of blurry scenery whizzing past. 1

Once-great director Robert Siodmak had been working half in Europe ever since 1952's
The Crimson Pirate, and Custer
of the West nowhere near approaches his classic noir output of the 1940s. The lighting
is resolutely flat, doing no favors for the reputation of Cecilio Paniagua, Mario Bava's cameraman
on the creepy
Lisa and the Devil. Writer Bernard
Gordon wrote undemanding stuff like
Hellcats of the Navy and
Earth vs. The Flying Saucers, and
Julian Halevy did the honors on the rather good Yordan production Crack in the World. Together
they pump a few reminders of Fritz Lang westerns into the stew. A raucous party thrown by General
Sheridan sees women riding on the backs of men as in Rancho Notorious. Custer gets a dose
of his own out-of-control fame as he sees himself portrayed on a Washington music hall stage, just
as in The Return of Frank James. The disorganization of the production shows other symptoms - when
the music-hall Custer sings, it's actor Robert Shaw who provides the lyrics.

MGM's DVD of Custer of the West is a very good-looking 2:35 flat letterboxed presentation,
even though the package text incorrectly says 1:85. Color is good and the compression more than
adequate. The presentation is full roadshow length minus overture and Intermission.

This is another ABC-licensed film being released by MGM, which should not be blamed for the lack of
enhancement in the transfer, as it's not Leo's movie. I've never seen exciting stills from Custer
of the West, but the cover photo is dull just the same. A second error in the package text will
irk history buffs, when Custer's folly the Battle of The Little Big Horn is referred to as The
Little Bighorn.

On a scale of Excellent, Good, Fair, and Poor,Custer of the Westrates:Movie: Good --
Video: Good
Sound: Good
Supplements: nonePackaging: Keep case
Reviewed: June 2, 2004

Footnote:

1.Which always makes me
think that the Trumbull/Kubrick Stargate sequence in 2001 was really a high-tech version of
the same kind of scene.Return